Humphrey Dinklehuegen and the Talking Horses

by Unwhole Hole

Chapter 16: The Death Eater

Sweetie Belle was not sure where Sunflower was going until they reached a large door on the far side of the warehouse, one that led to a lower level. As they passed, Humph actually managed to be mildly useful and closed the door with his wand. Sweetie Belle, copying the sealing spell that Ivan had used on his mysterious floor-hatch, locked it.

Sunflower slowed to a trot, and Sweetie Belle- -aware of the irony of an equine riding another equine- -jumped off. Humph had to be thrown.

“Oh wow,” he said, curling into a fetal position. “I’ve fantasized about that hundreds of times, but it is SO much more terrifying in real life!”

Sunflower helped him to his feet, and then punched him square in the nose.

“That’s for thinking dirty thoughts about me!” shouted Sunflower. “And for not appreciating me permitting you to ride me!”

“I’m getting mixed messages,” said Humph, holding his nose and doubling over.

“What about Ivan?” said Sweetie Belle, suddenly realizing that they had forgotten him.

“He just fist-fought a dragon,” said Sunflower. “He’ll be fine.”

Sweetie Belle agreed with a nod, and the group slowly started walking in the only direction that was available to them- -down. This led them to an underground area that appeared to have been subdivided from a large, single storage room or a parking structure.

Almost the first thing they ran into was an enormous, well-lit laboratory. Several of the machines were running, and a sharp-featured man was standing in it. As soon as he saw them entered, he just turned around and shouted at them. “Who the bloody heck are you?”

Sweetie Belle paid little attention to him, though. Across the room, she saw a different entrance- -and saw Fluttershy enter, out of breath and followed by a horde of immense snakes, one of which was toting Trixie.

“Fluttershy!” cried Sweetie Belle.

“Sweetie Belle!” replied Fluttershy. Tears of relief flooded to her eyes. She started to run forward, only to be stopped as a black mist began to fill the room.

“Oh no,” said the man who had already been there. “Not this again…”

Several tall figures stepped out of the darkness- -and then many more than several. Humph raised his wand, and Sweetie Belle her horn. As they did, though, the figures stepped back, clearing an area in the center of the floor. As they did, the black mist condensed.

A new figure emerged. He was dressed in a similar dark cloak, but his mask was far more ornate. Unlike the others, he was the height of a normal man. The crystal brooch he wore was larger than the others, and shaped like a star with curving arms.

“Wait a minute,” said Sunflower, her eyes narrowing as she took a defensive stance. “That’s an Origin Stone!”

The Death Eater- -the only human among countless mindless, undead drones- -took several steps forward and then stopped, standing still.

“Of course,” he sighed, his voice distorted through his mask. “Of course you would do this, Humph.”

“Do what?” demanded Sweetie Belle, her confidence still high from her newfound power to eliminate physical objects with barely a thought. “Aside from make a ridiculously expensive mess that he can’t possibly ever pay to clean up?”

“What? No, I can totally pay for it!” Humph leaned to the non-Death Eater man and whispered loudly. “No I can’t! I don’t have any money!”

The Death Eater reached up to his face and took hold of his mask. He removed it and pulled back his hood. The entire room gaped.

Humph lowered his wand. “Wait…VINCE?”

“Vincent,” corrected Vincent. “And yes. It’s me. I mean, the whole ‘army of the undead’? Do you really think there’s any other necromancer that can accomplish that? I mean, you sure can’t.”

“Yes I can!” Humph once again leaned toward the man. “No I can’t!” he whispered.

“Why do you keep telling me things?”

“Well, it’s not the worst twist,” said Sweetie Belle shrugging. “I mean, it’s not like any of us were replaced with a clone by a greasy space cannibal.”

“That’s oddly specific,” said Sunflower. “And profoundly idiotic.”

“I think I might have been replaced,” said Humph. “I’ve just been so ichy lately…”

“Excuse me,” said Vincent. “Death Eater here. And you aren’t the least bit afraid?”

Fluttershy raised her hoof from behind him. “I peed a little,” she volunteered. “I mean, if that makes you feel any better.”

“Wait,” said Humph. “So, you’re the Death Eater? Like, seriously?”

Vincent nodded. “I have been. This whole time. I would have been in the war if I had been born at the time.”

“So…you’re the one who wanted to bring that Voldemort guy back to life?”

The strange man in the room’s eyes widened. “Wait,” he said, turning toward Vincent angrily. “You didn’t say anything about that!”

Vincent shrugged. “Well, what did you think I needed all that unicorn blood for?”

“But that won’t work!” said Sunflower. “It’s impossible! His horcruxes were destroyed! There’s nothing left to resurrect!”

Vincent smiled. “Well, yes. But only if you believe that magic is the epitome of human ability, or the lie that the soul is essential for human life. With our self-imposed exile, we’ve been left to live in the intellectual squalor, wallowing in archaic ideas that we are ‘better’ than muggles. While Grindenwald was perfecting his killing curse and undead army? They were making the atom bomb.”

“What’s an atom bomb?” asked Sweetie Belle.

“Ask Ivan later,” said Humph.

Vincent continued. “We have more than enough genetic material to bring him back through modern cloning. The trouble is integrating his lost engrams back into the shell to reconstruct his mind. That process needs to be done by magic. And the only way for the Dark Lord to survive is to replace his blood with, well, yours.” He leered at Sweetie Belle.

“But why?” said the man, stepping forward. “The Dark Lord was a monster! A madman! You’re standing here telling me you’re going to use muggle technology to bring him back? Hypocrite!”

Vincent just laughed. “You misunderstand what I’m trying to create. I don’t need a leader, a pointless moral figure to rally around. He won’t have volition, or free will, or a soul. His only purpose will be to give me access to his knowledge.” His expression suddenly hardened. “Because that FOOL Potter, in his complete ignorance and ARROGANT views of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ destroyed the greatest mind in a generation. I mean, think of the things Voldemort could have taught us. The limits of the dark arts, and how to transcend them. A means to unify life and death!”

“And you- -I can’t believe it,” said the man, “I- -I was going to sell you the blood!”

“Oh, no,” said Vincent. “You were going to give me the blood, and then I was going to murder you all.” He shrugged. “In fact, if it hadn’t been for that little white filly, you’d be a Death Eater by now.” He motioned toward one of the Rotts standing around him. Vincent then raised his wand, pointing it toward Humph. “And I was hoping to do it without the Brotherhood catching on. I was hoping to keep this as my personal project and stay nice and squeaky clean. But, you know, these stooges can’t be trusted with this. And neither can you. Avad- -”

“Interuptus!”

Vincent paused. Then he started again. “Avada- -”

“Interuptus!”

Vincent angrily lowered his wand. “Stop that! You’re not even casting a spell, you’re just saying ‘interuptus’!”

Vincent’s wand suddenly burst with a bizarre surge of orange light, the result of him holding it while saying Humph’s spell name. Sweetie Belle was not sure if that had been intentional or not; based on past experience, she leaned toward believing that it was dumb luck.

She did not waste her chance, though, and neither did Humph. She ducked to the left, and he to the right.

“Stupify!” she called.

“Alohamora!” called Humph.

Vincent handily deflected Sweetie Belle’s spell, and did not bother to dodge Humph’s spell. When it hit him, though, his robes burst into flames, a side-effect of Humph performing the unlocking spell profoundly incorrectly.

“Accio SPINE!” screamed Vincent, flicking his wand toward Humph.

Sweetie Belle responded by summoning a large cactus to block the spell from reaching Humph. As soon as the spell hit it, the various needles shot out of it surface and flew toward Vincent, forcing him to repel them with a flame spell.

“Legilimens!” shouted Humph as Vincent was distracted. The spell struck him in the head. Vincent screamed madly, reaching for his head. His inferi faltered for a moment, and Sweetie Belle saw his Origin Stone spark.

“The IMAGES!” screamed Vincent. “Centaurs in socks! Why? WHY?!”

Eugene backed up to Sunflower. He looked at the guns on her tactical holster. “You’re good with guns, right?”

“You can bet your muggle but,” she said.

“Here.” He removed a coin from his pocket and flipped it. A Vanishing Kalashnikov appeared. “Use this.”

“Soviet guns are crap,” said Sunflower. Somewhere, Ivan shivered. “But it will work.”

Vincent, now stumbling, pointed at Humph. “Get him!” he shouted, just as Sunflower opened fire. The inferi shielded Vincent and rushed toward Humph, who fired several leeks at them.

Sweetie Belle sprung into action, sliding across the floor and reaching out not with a human spell but with her default magic. She grasped the Origin Stone around Vincent’s neck and tore it free. It went surprisingly deep, and removing it was apparently not pleasant for the man. Once it was removed, though, his inferi jolted and then collapsed.

“Give me that back, you little- -ACCIO KALASHNIKOV!”

Sunflower’s gun was pulled free of her hands, and Vincent vaporized it.

“Hey!” said Humph. “That’s not fair! You should at least- -”

“AVADA KEDAVRA!”

Green light shot from Vincent’s wand and struck Humph in the chest. Sunflower screamed, but Sweetie Belle had no idea why. Humph’s eyes widened, and then he collapsed backward into a pile of inferi before lying still on the ground.

“HA!” shouted Vincent. “I WIN! You were a terrible necromancer anyway, you know you deserved that! And now- -”

His eyes widened and his words caught in his throat as Humph groaned and started to stand up.

“Does one of these inferi have keys in his pocket?” he said, rubbing his rear. “Because I think I felt them. At least, I hope those were keys.”

“How- -how- -” Vincent looked at his wand. The spell had been performed correctly, as he had performed it countless thousands of times. Humph had not dodged. It had been a direct hit. Shaken but undeterred, he pointed his wand at his former friend again. “Avada kedavra!”

Another beam of green energy struck Humph in the chest. Humph shook slightly, but this time he did not fall. “WhoHOOhoo,” he said. “That feels really, REALLY weird!”

“But that’s- -that’s IMPOSSIBLE!” screamed Vincent. “No one survives that curse! No human being can block or avert it! No human can survive!”

“Oh,” said Humph. “That probably explains it, then. I’m not actually human. I’m an evolutionarily advanced boggart.”

The whole room went silent for almost a minute. Then Sunflower shouted.

“You’re WHAT?”

“A boggart,” said Humph, shrugging. “I mean, I always have been.”

“And you didn’t tell us this WHY?”

“Well, it’s one of those things I knew but that I forgot I knew. You know, like what the capital of North Dakota is.”

“You forgot- -you- -you are a- -” Sunflower fell silent. “You know what? You know what? With the way this has been going, I can’t even withstand to be incredulous anymore.”

“So,” said Sweetie Belle. “You’re a boggart…named Humphry?”

The entire room took a second to get the joke, and then they all groaned at the same time. Even Fluttershy’s snakes, all of whom had been patiently watching, hissed in disapproval.

“But that doesn’t make any sense! At ALL!” cried Vincent. “You should be my worst fear, then!”

Humph’s voice dropped several octaves. “But I’m already your worst nightmare!”

“Riddikulus,” said Sweetie Belle, pointing her horn at Humph. An oversized straw sombrero appeared on his head.

“And now I’m wearing a silly hat,” said Humph. He reached up and touched the brim. “Hmm…this his actually really high quality.”

“Avada kedavra!”

Another green blast hit Humph, and he did not even respond this time except with a sigh. “Come on, Vince. Give it up. I’m a being made out of magical protoplasm. You might as well be trying to kill a dementor or a poltergeist. Or like trying to get mould out of grout. I’ll just keep coming back.”

Vincent glared at him, but then lowered his wand. “I don’t know if you’re telling the truth. I don’t know what you are, actually. But you’re not immortal. I’ll figure something out…so you’ll have to wait.” He turned sharply toward Fluttershy and Trixie. “So, onto the next one! Guess what? I only need the UNICORNS!” He raised his wand and pointed it at Fluttershy. “Avada- -”

Fluttershy’s young basilisks apparently took grave offense to this. One leapt forward with incredible speed and strength. It sailed through the air, and Vincent’s eyes widened as he barely managed to deflect it- -only for another one to sink its fangs into his upper shoulder and another to attach to his leg. Fluttershy cried out in confusion and fear and ran wildly into the room, trying to get away from danger.

“Expulso!” said Trixie, barely conscious but still managing to raise her wand in the magic from her horn. A small explosion knocked Vincent forward, and he slammed into a counter. The snakes were dislodged by the blast, but the damage had already been done. Several wide holes were visible in his neck.

“Holy crap!” cried Humph as Vincent went into convulsions, barely managing to hold himself up on the counter. He approached his friend, but Vincent forced himself away. “Come on, Vince, we have to get you to a hospital! Right now!”

“Marvin can get to St. Mungos in five minutes,” said Eugene, stepping forward. “If we can stop the bleeding- -”

Vincent nearly passed out, then suddenly burst into sardonic laughter.

“Vince?”

“Don’t bother,” he said, his voice cracking as his body began to fail. “There’s only one cure for basilisk venom…” He flicked open a small metal briefcase. “But there’s also one cure for death itself!”

With his one working hand shaking badly, Vincent reached into the case and removed a vial of silvery fluid. He bit the lid off with his teeth and spat out.

“Vince, wait,” said Humph. “Don’t do anything rash!”

“Rash? HA! I’m being quite logical, in fact. This may be my best idea ever! It all makes sense now, I can’t see why I never saw it before! Venom of a basilisk, blood of a unicorn- -unstopable death, and unstoppable life. I don’t think Voldemort will miss one vial.”

Before anyone could stop him, Vincent tipped the glass vial to his mouth, swallowing the contents.

“Hey!” cried Trixie, despite her weakness clearly offended by the sight. “That’s Trixie’s blood! I didn’t give you permission to do that!”

Vincent ignored him, and threw the glass against the ground, shattering it. He then stood up straight, no longer showing any signs of weakness or poisoning. As he flexed his now repaired arm, the color from his face began to fade. His skin became pale, then white, with even his freckles disappearing. His blue eyes became washed out to gray, then to silver, and his red hair began to grow and whiten.

Sweetie Belle took a step back. She was not sure if the others could feel it, but she knew that Trixie could- -as unicorns, they were more sensitive to magic than other creatures. The creature that had been Vincent was almost hemorrhaging magic now. Sweetie Belle could almost feel the heat- -it was like he was burning up inside.

“It’s perfect,” said Vincent, lifting his head and smiling as his features reconfigured into an almost hyperbolically perfect version of a human face. He looked down at the hole from the basilisk fang. It was still there, but it had blackened. The wound was still poisoning him; he was just unable to die from it. “I never knew it would feel like this! The junction between Life and Death!”

“Vince, what have you done?” whispered Humph.

Vincent’s eyes narrowed, and he turned to Humph. He raised one of his hands, and a blast of white light shot out, flinging Humph backward with tremendous force. Humph struck a column of equipment so hard that a running centrifuge that he hit cracked and destabilized, tearing itself apart and dropping onto the floor next to him.

The strength of the blast apparently surprised Vincent as well. He looked down at his hand, confused, and then laughed. He removed his wand. “Well,” he said. “I won’t be needing this anymore, will I?”

He clenched his fist around the wand, and it sizzled and disintegrated into embers from his magic. He began to walk toward Humph, and as he did, he began to convert his black robes into white.

“Impedamentum!” shouted Sweetie Belle. The spell hit Vincent, but he did not even bother to react. The corona of magic surrounding his body. Trixie also managed a few weak blasts, but hers were even weaker than Sweetie Belle’s. At this point, nothing was able to stop the wizard.

“Oh my coccyx,” said Humph as he sat up. He leaned back, looking up at the beautiful wizard now standing above him.

“I’m going to kill you now,” said Vincent. “I’m going to kill them all. All except the unicorns. Them I’ll bleed. But don’t worry. I’ll dissect you. Find out what you really are. Or maybe I’ll just bring you back as an inferi and make you my personal piñata.” He raised one of his hands, and it began to charge with green light.

“HUMPH!” shouted Sunflower. “DO SOMETHING, YOU IDIOT!”

“Something?” said Humph, his eyes falling on the pieces of the broken centrifuge. He reached out and plucked a vial that had been spinning down out of it. “How about I fight me some fire with fire?”

Sweetie Belle’s eyes widened. “Humph, NO!” she cried. She started to rush forward, but she was stopped by the strong grip of an unusually cold hoof on her shoulder. She looked up to see that Fluttershy had stopped her.

Humph popped the lid to the blood vial and swallowed the contents. Almost as soon as he did, he shivered. “Whoa,” he said. “That was a REALLY unexpected flavour. Not bad, but…weird.”

He barely got that sentence out when his body exploded with transformation. One of his arms cracked and twisted as it shot out, bending and warping, his skin hardening to hideous cracked plates and exploding with vicious bone spines. The rest of his body seemed to fold around himself as his torso grew in a horrible asymmetrical fashion, exploding forth with course hair and slimy, gelatinous skin. Even his face warped, with his mouth splitting wide open with jagged, yellowed teeth as his upper face burst apart with crimson, glaring eyes. Within seconds, he had morphed into a horrid abomination, something vaguely the shape of a gorilla but much larger and badly distorted by mutation. He had gone from a man to a drooling, wheezing and supermuscular monstrosity.

Trixie, upon seeing this THING, fainted. Sunflower vomited. Sweetie Belle had to avert her eyes.

“What- -I don’t understand!” she said. “Trixie’s blood made Vincent beautiful, so why did it do that to Humph?!”

“Because that wasn’t Trixie’s blood,” said Fluttershy, calmly. “It was mine.”

“Gah,” gurgled Humph, trying to speak though his oversized and crooked mouth as well as several that had formed along his neck and right arm. “Can’t- -can’t resist- -the urge!”

Vincent smiled. “So you feel it too? The endless bloodlust. The HUNGER.”

Humph screamed and stepped back, grasping his face with his disproportionatly long arms. “The URGE! K- -k- -”

“Killing.”

“KINDNESS!”

Vincent’s jaw dropped, and Humph pulled back his arms.

“W- -what?!”

“Overwhelming compassion! A love for all living things!” Humph scooped up the terrified baby basilisks in his arms and hugged them. “I- -I’ve never felt such an urge to be so polite and helpful to anypony in need! “

Vincent’s expression of confusion immediately turned to one of profound anger. He sighed. “And I thought I would have an ally. Oh well. I may not be able to kill you, so I’ll just banish you to the Void. Easy enough, right?”

He raised his hand and struck Humph with a spell. Humph simply absorbed it without taking any damage or harm. If anything, his body got more swollen and broke open with more bony plates and steely organic armor.

“Don’t just stand there!” called Sunflower. “Pummel him!”

Vincent turned around angrily and fired a bolt of green light at the centaur. It barely got two meters, though, before it struck Humph, who had interposed himself almost instantaneously between Vincent and Sunflower. Once again, he absorbed it and become bigger and more ugly.

“You ought to treat women with respect and caring,” he said. “But at the same time, acknowledge the fact that they are equally people and can be independent and strong as well.”

“So unicorn blood makes me a god and makes you spout platitudes? So be it.”

Vincent shot forward and struck Humph in the gut with a magically charged punch. The impact did absolutely nothing except cause him to sprout two globular, multi-jointed arms from his back.

“And you should treat others exactly as you would want them to treat you!” shouted Humph, returning an identical punch to Vincent’s body. His eyes bulged out, and Sweetie Belle heard a crack from within the man’s body. At the same time, she noticed that he was staring to change as well. Vincent seemed to have grown taller and thinner. Instead of being well-proportioned, he was now gaunt.

Vincent leaned back and then screamed, pushing a tremendous amount of magic forward. Humph dodged, and it punched an enormous hole through the top of the room at an oblique angle, vaporizing everything in its path until there was nothing but a charred channel to the warehouse above. Ivan and Liu leaned forward and looked down.

“I’m a superior being!” shrieked Vincent, striking again and again at Humph. Most of the blows missed, but the ones that did only made Humph stronger. Meanwhile, Vincent’s magic was beginning to weaken. He was now substantially taller than a human, and his skin had become tight and dry. His silky white hair had become coarse and straw-like, and it was beginning to recede. “I am BETTER! I’ve always been smarter, STRONGER! Everything else, everyone one else- -they’re all WEAK! Even YOU!”

“Prejudice is the result of focusing solely on your own strengths and the weaknesses of others,” said Humph, dodging a blast of flame. “And it’s a waste of potential! Instead, we should pool our strengths to overcome our mutual weaknesses and work together!”

“I will not have my world contaminated by INFERIORS! My work will create so much benefit, can’t you see?! I alone can solve every problem that we have ever faced!”

Humph planted his feet against the ground and lunched forward. “All problems can be solved by understanding- -” He struck Vincent’s magical corona, doing no damage to his physical form but degrading the shield that surrounded him. “Empathy!” - -another blow, and Vincent was knocked back. “And KINDNESS!” A third blow, and Vincent’s shield was mostly gone. Humph, now towering over the thin, aged man, spread his arms wide. “And remember.” He slammed his hands closed around Vincent, who barely managed to summon his remaining magic in time to produce an egg-shaped projection around himself.

“Huggies” - -Humph pushed his arms in farther, causing Vincent’s shield to begin to crack- -“make everything”- -he increased the pressure, and Vincent was now desperately trying to keep Humph from touching him. Then Humph took a deep breath and slammed his arms togather. “BETTER!”

The hug had such force that the shockwave knocked everyone in the room down and was so beautiful that it caused Ivan’s hat to cry.

When the smoke finally cleared, they saw Humph- -now completely clothesless- -standing in the center of the room in his human form. He was hugging, but it appeared that Vincent had managed to slip out at the last second. He stood a few yards away, breathing hard and shaking. He was no longer human. He was now at least eight feet tall, but his tattered, rapidly mouldering robes surrounded a skeletal frame. His hair had now almost completely fallen out, and skin was somehow wrinkled and tight at the same time, stretched across features that were barely recognizable as those of a human being.

“I- -I need more!” he gasped, lunging toward the case containing Trixie’s blood. Trixie, though, reached out with her magic and pulled the box toward her. “That’s mine!” she said.

“No, it isn’t!”

Vincent started toward Trixie, but several snakes, Fluttershy, and Sweetie Belle blocked his path. In his weakened state, he actually stopped and recoiled, his silver eyes looking around wildly. He seemed confused, even afraid, and he started clawing at the rapidly spreading poison marks on his shoulder and legs.

He turned to Humph, who was staring back at him. “It’s not…over,” he rasped. “It’s not over.”

There was a pop and he vanished as he aparated away.

Author's Note:

Does a twist add to the plot, or does it just give the audience a purple-nurple?